_paddi___'s reviews
9 reviews

This book was wonderfully thought provoking. It took a long time for me to get through though because it is better read in small quantities in order to take the words in otherwise it gets too much and feels repetitive.
Some words hit that feeling in the soul harder than others but it's surprising how many of them are relatable on some level. Some I simply didn't get at all but that's alright because each takes up only a small portion of a page. The longer ones that go into elaborate detail were far less enjoyable, however, as they simply went on too long to stay invested and got too specific to be relatable. Once descriptions of specifc life moments come into it, I just don't feel these because I don't have the same life as the author.
Overall I thought this was a really enjoyable book when consumed in the righ way and I'm glad to have read it.

I always loved Calvin & Hobbes.
I bought this book because Bill Watterson wrote it. I didn't know anything else of it.
This story was incredible, beautiful, artistic and thought provoking.
I loved reading this very much.
The artwork was fantastic.
The format was fresh and intriguing.
And in the end, The Mysteries was Mysterious.

The story may not be for everybody. In fact, it may not appeal to most.
But this book was very much for me.

This really was an incredible book that I enjoyed thoroughly right from the start all the way up to the end leaving me immediately wanting to start the next part of the trilogy.
If it weren't for the little things that bothered me, this would be a five star book easily. I love the science-fiction of it the most and primarily that is what this story is. Concept and plot very much comes first far above character development or personality. This is a story of mankind at war with itself (in a way very much grounded in reality) such that it leads to the first contact with alien life beautifully strange and scarily hostile and these are what take the main focus. However it is very clearly the first act of a larger story and so on its own it doesn't feel complete at all. The structure of this book feels like it fails to follow any kind of structure in itself as it is only a piece of a larger story. As if one book as been cut into three and I have only read a third of a book yet it is packaged as a whole. Because of this, it never feels like it really goes anywhere. Sure, a lot happens and the story spans multiple decades (or thousands of years) but that feels simply circumstantial. While these things that happen are very interesting, they are just things happening as opposed to a story. This works in the book's favour on some level as it leaves the reader eager for the second book the same way the first chapter to any single book should leave the reader ready for the rest of itself.
My second criticism is that the characters are merely vessels for the plot to happen around. This a perfectly valid way to tell a story but it does make it harder to be invested at all with any kind of emotion other than interest in the sci-fi ideas. I don't care about the characters at all especially the main character Wang Miao who seems personalityless and barely contributes anything at all other than to be consistently present such that we have one character we can follow. This is especially noticealbe in the Three Body game chapters in which I regularly forgot he was even present as he was just an excuse to have these chapters in the book and did almost nothing in this supposed 'game' other than to ask a few questions and watch events unfold. Watching the plot happen around him is what he does and this is fine except that I have no character to invest in. On the other hand, there is Ye Wenjie, the other perspective character, for the chapters set during the cultural revolution who again feels mostly there for things to happen to but she at least has some agency in the narrative as she is what begins the entire purpose of the story through her own actions due to decisions entirely understandable due to her past. She may not have personality but she has good motivations. 
These sections of the book following Ye Wenjie's side of the story were more interesting to me and that is why I found the chapter structure of switching back and forth between the two to be rather jarring. Vast stretches of the book felt like they would forget about the other side as we go a little too many chapters in a row without checking in on them. While I enjoyed both sides of the story, I kept growing concerned that we would never return to the other. This is simply a layout preference and, again, only a minor criticism but I couldn't not mention it.
Overall, I did really enjoy this book and I look forward to starting the rest of it. Some of the concepts involved were fascinating to imagine and really think about how they work. A wonderful exploration of sci-fi and challeges faced by small creatures in a huge impossibly complex universe unhindered by characters.

This is easily the worst ending to a book series I have ever read. I spent over a decade working through this series from a very young age only to have that absolute major disappointment with this one in the end. Without spoiling anything, I'll just say the answers to all the long running mysteries are terrible, dissappointing and handled awfully. Nothing about this works as a finale. Sure the story of just this book on it's own works adequately enough but I will not treat it as separate to the whole series and it is the one book guilty of revealing such bad resolutions. Many of the disappointments with this series began with the previous book but this is where it ended and so did my care for the whole series.

I'll admit I read this book because I liked the film 'Arrival'. However, I am glad to say that the entire book was good actually. 
Right from the beginning I was hooked by 'Tower of Babylon'. I found the religious fiction to be very interesting as a genre I have never explored at all before. The sheer scale and intense descriptions of the tower was one for captivating the imagination and the resolution in the end was a pleasant twist I didn't expect.
'Understand' was unexpectedly tense, high-action and thrilling, picking up pace very quickly and holding it up intelligently while continually provoking new ideas about the true potential of the human mind and the limit of knowledge.
Of course 'Story of your life' stood out as clearly the best and I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this story I already knew well from the film but told much better in more interesting detail as a written work with more interesting ideas cut out from the film that really captivated and excited the imagination.
'Hell is the Absence of God' was the only story I came out of this book having disliked. Maybe I should have just appreciated it for being well written and exploring another interesting take on religion but I found myself quite upset by the ending (I say this even as someone who is not a believer) and just struggle to look past what a rotten twist that was even if well foreshadowed. I just find myself rather pissed off about that as it turns the story upside down and though that may be the intention, that doesn't make it enjoyable to read.
Finally, 'Liking What You See: A Documentary' was a wonderfully presented thought experiment exploring a vast number of perspectives around a very grounded fictional political issue that really opens up the mind to other ways of thinking and leaves you lost for a side to choose as they all make such interesting points. I may disagree with some of the foundations on which the story is built but I can look past that to really appreciate how well this story achieves its intentions all the way through.
Overall, a very good book.

As a longtime fan of Timothy Hickson through his youtube channel, I went and bought his first fiction book the moment I found out about it and it was pretty much exactly as I expected from an author I love so much who I also know is a first time writer. As with any collection of short stories, it is a mixed bag but the highs are very high and the lows aren't too low.
My favourite is easily 'The Funeralists; or Hate in Five Parts'. This was a fascinating story based on such an original concept that having had my eyes opened to, I desperately want to find more like it. I always love a story told in parts across vast expanses of time and this couldn't expand across more time. In such a short space of time, it expertly drew me in to feeling all the feelings our main character does through the massive up and downs of her journey watching humanity. This story stuck so hard in my head that I will never stop thinking about it. It just hits so different.
A story I have more complex feelings for was 'A Worm Beneath the Skin' [spoiler due to description of self-harm]

As someone who has suffered from mental health issues and self-harm myself, I was unfortunately rather disappointed my this one. Of course, everybody's experience is different so I wouldn't want to suggest that this is not an accurate depiction of these issues but it really didn't speak much to me despite being a fairly similar problem to my own. The metaphors were half lost on me and I just didn't buy into it all that much. I can only hope that others found more enjoyment from this one ad it doesn't do much that interesting other than to try and tackle this difficult topic.

If you want your heart broken in less than 20 tense pages, 'Two Robots at the End of the World' is the perfect start to this book for you. I really didn't expect to open on such a high to make me feel so much for just two lovable little robots so quickly.
For balance, I'll say that I didn't care much for the poetry in this book and while that may be partially a personal preference, I really tried hard to enjoy them anyway and it just didn't work for me at all. Maybe I need more skill at analysing poetry because I could barely even understand it, unfortunately.
As I write this review, I keep remembering more and more about this book that I actually really enjoyed. There is just so much to it, I couldn't possibly fit it all in a reasonably sized review. So many of the stories are amazing and weird and wild and varied and I find it inspiring to see such originality to many of them. I can't recommend this book enough.

In the final installment of this amazing trilogy, I continued to be amazed by the vast range of story and themes all coming from this one universe. Each book was so different from the others and I can confidently say that this was the weirdest by far (weird is good) though it was also the most confusing in a way that had me a little annoyed at times when it didn't quite feel like it was supposed to be as confusing as it was until looking back on it afterwards.
I never would have expected after reading the second book that in this one

a strong focus on the alien lifeform containing so many different stolen personalities and the philosophical/moral implications of that would be something that I found so interesting and enjoyable.

It very much improved upon the flaws of the previous book such that I grew a better appreciation of both. I loved the characters in this installment so much more fun and lovable; the dynamic between the crows being especially amusing. For me, I felt the emotion of the ending to fall a little flat but I would guess that's more a me-thing than a writing-thing. I think I don't quite agree with all the philosophical conclusions of this story the way I did previously but again it's good to be exposed to differing views and that is very much the core of this trilogy. This one really got me thinking about what I believe and questioning even harder what it means to be sentient. What a way to wrap up the best books I have ever read. I love it so much.

My least favourite of the trilogy but very much still a great book. Going straight from the first book, this was very much not what I expected but I struggle to decide whether this is a good or bad thing. I was disappointed by a change to the structure I loved so much in the first book but I don't hold that against it. I would say that this was a little more complicated than the first book to follow; the more alien (non-human) perspectives were harder to understand and relate to due to less focus on them or telling from their point of view and I was also disappointed by a massive dialling back on the spider perspective.

I found the reveal of actual alien life to be rather jarring but I got over it. The ideas around it are rather fascinating even if a little farfetched. Maybe I missed something but I wish the POV of the alien thing had been more explicitly implied to be of the alien near the beginning because I took far too long to pick up on that and had no idea what was going on in those strangely formatted chapters.

The characters got a lot less focus and I found myself mostly not caring about any of them anywhere near as much and this was the book's biggest flaw for me. Finally, the ending was resolved far too quickly and conveniently in ways that feel a little disbelieveable given everything established in the story up to that point.

One of the best books I have ever read. A fascinating world and it's development told across thousands of years parallel to a human story so vastly different and yet also the same all culminating in a tense disagreement that really tore me apart on who to route for and was resolved absolutely perfectly. I cannot recommend this book enough. Lovable characters, fascinating worldbuilding, high-concept sci-fi, mind-expanding perspectives and the weirdness of something so alien somehow made so human. I've never read a book so fast.